Daring Bakers: Panettone

The December 2012 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by the talented Marcellina of Marcellina in Cucina. Marcellina challenged us to create our own custom Panettone, a traditional Italian holiday bread!

I always love the December challenge.  The December challenge always seems to be some traditional Christmas treat and this months challenge did not let me down.  There are probably more variations of a Christmas bread than there are countries and this one comes from Italy.

I started out making the candied orange peels.  I have done this many times now - two years ago for the Daring Bakers Christmas Stollen.  The bread was not difficult but it did take some time.  When you start reading a recipe and it contains seven sub-recipes (sponge, first-dough, second-dough, final dough, candied orange peels, and glaze) and some of the steps have multiple risings; you know it is going to take some time.

The other complication to the recipe is that is traditional cooked in a special paper "pan".  I wasn't sure of a local source and I was too cheap to pay $5 for shipping on a few sheets of paper so I followed Marcellina instructions for making your own.  It was a little bit of a pain and the papers did not look pretty for displaying the finished product, but it worked.

I ended up cooking my bread for 10 minutes longer than the recipe called for and it still came out a bit doughy.  I am cooking a second loaf now and will go even longer on this one.  I also think I followed the recipe by not really mixing the filling in much so the filling was kind of in pockets.  I notice a lot of the other pictures that people have posted show the filing more evenly distributed.  Not really sure which way is "right" - it was good with the pockets of filling but i am sure it would be good with the filling more even too.

I also used double the orange peel like Marcellina suggested as candied citron is expensive.  I made a glaze for mine but didn't follow the recipe.  Some of my family doesn't like the almond so I just made a similar glaze without the almond flour and added a little orange essence.

Even though the center was a little doughy it was still very good and it was a big hit on Christmas morning.  A nice sweet moist bread with a delicious filling.  Thanks for sharing these recipes Marcellina.